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Go Rowing
Why not look through this section for skill and knowledge development opportunities.
Knowledge
From personal challenges, tours and fund-raisers to regattas, heads and international competition – there are so many ways to enjoy rowing.
Events
The GB Rowing Team is the high performance arm of British Rowing. Rowing is the nation’s most continuously successful Olympic sport, having won a gold medal in every Olympic Games since 1984, and has won six Paralympic golds since the sport was introduced to the Paralympic Games programme in 2008.
GB Rowing Team
High Performance Coach
Paul has been coaching the GB Rowing Team since 2009, when he was appointed to take leadership of the lightweight women’s sculling squad.
©Peter Spurrier/Intersport Images
Under Paul’s guidance, in their first experience of Olympic level racing, the LW2x of Kathryn Twyman and Imogen Walsh placed a creditable 4th at the 2013 World Rowing Championships in Chungju, and Ruth Walczak won a fine bronze medal in the LW1x.
The following year, Imogen and Katherine Copeland took gold at both the second and third World Cup events, and although disappointed to miss out on a spot in the A final at the World Championships in Amsterdam, they won the B final with ease and recorded a new world best time.
2015 brought great success: silver for both the LW2x -Charlotte Taylor and Katherine Copeland – and Imogen Walsh in the LW1x at the World Championships in Aiguebelette; Taylor and Copeland also produced an outstanding performance at the second World Cup in Varese to set a new world best time.
The 2016 season had its disappointments with the 2015 LW2x unable to repeat their form after a season plagued by illness and injury. However the LW4x produced a great result to take the gold medal at the World Rowing Championships in Rotterdam.
Paul’s most notable coaching achievement to date has been the fantastic gold medal won by Sophie Hosking and Katherine Copeland in the LW2x at the London 2012 Olympic Games. Throughout the regatta they managed to outpace crews who had beaten them throughout the season, and won the first ever Olympic medal for a GB lightweight women’s boat.
Hester Goodsell and Sophie Hosking had laid the foundations for this outstanding Olympic victory in the previous few seasons, winning bronze at the 2009 and 2011 World Championships, and placing 5th at the 2010 event in Lake Karapiro in New Zealand.
Paul took up rowing at school, because he “wasn’t very good at cricket”. He went on to become a physiotherapist, and later, Chief Coach at London Rowing Club.
If stranded on a desert island, Paul would take with him a book, hammock and an umbrella. Not many people know that he used to be a hand model.
